Powders are used in numerous applications. They are the building blocks of electronic, telecommunication, electrical, magnetic, structural, optical, biomedical, chemical, thermal, and consumer goods. On-going market demands for smaller, faster, superior and more portable products have demanded miniaturization of numerous devices. This, in turn, demands miniaturization of the building blocks, i.e. the powders. Sub-micron and nano-engineered (or nanoscale, nanosize, ultrafine) powders, with a size 10 to 100 times smaller than conventional micron size powders, enable quality improvement and differentiation of product characteristics at scales currently unachievable by commercially available micron-sized powders.
Nanopowders in particular and sub-micron powders in general are a novel family of materials whose distinguishing feature is that their domain size is so small that size confinement effects become a significant determinant of the materials' performance. Such confinement effects can, therefore, lead to a wide range of commercially important properties. Nanopowders, therefore, are an extraordinary opportunity for design, development and commercialization of a wide range of devices and products for various applications. Furthermore, since they represent a whole new family of material precursors where conventional coarse-grain physiochemical mechanisms are not applicable, these materials offer a unique combination of properties that can enable novel and multifunctional components of unmatched performance. Yadav et al. in a co-pending and commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/638,977, which along with the references contained therein, is hereby incorporated by reference in full, teaches some applications of sub-micron and nanoscale powders.
Some of the challenges in the cost-effective production of powders involve controlling the size of the powders as well as controlling other characteristics such as the shape, distribution, the composition of the powder, etc. Innovations are desired in these regard.